How to Move Across Two States in 25 Easy Steps!

1. Have your boyfriend discover that the University of Montana is looking for a costumer in their graduate program for the fall (but it has to be discovered at the end of May, and NOT  Feb./March like usual).
2. Decide you actually want to go to Grad school, and have subsequent metal breakdowns and periods of giddiness.
3. Contact your college professor and have her help you put together all your application stuff on the day of your 22nd birthday. IT MUST BE ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!
4. Anxiously submit your materials by the first week of June...and wait...and wait...and wait
5. Be interviewed for Grad school a mere four weeks after you submitted your materials (during these four weeks you must pray fervently each time you enter the bridal shop you do alterations at, that you will be accepted to grad school).
6. Wait another three weeks to hear anything (they told you it would be two weeks, and you must email them timidly asking what is happening, then they will tell you to wait longer)
7. Pray frantically for grad school (or sweet sweet death) each time you deal with another bride who verbally berates you for charging too much (remember you can't work on commission but be paid hourly like a dope)
8. A mere three weeks before classes start (and three and half short weeks after the interview) you must receive your acceptance letter/email
9. Scream/clap to yourself and run out the door to the bakery/cafe your boyfriend works at to tell him the news
10. FREAK OUT!!!!This must be done positively and negatively...you could get mauled by a bear you know, but maybe the bear will be wearing a top hat and monocle and have you for lunch with tea!
11. Tell your boss you are giving your two weeks notice. You must feel morally terrible about it, as she had just told you she would be needing you more due to her very sick husband at home "So, is this a bad time to tell you I got accepted to Grad school and need to give my two weeks notice?" [exact quote]
12. Realize you have to drive 12 hours to a place where you know NOBODY!! AND NOTHING! Assure yourself you can drive 12 hours in one day.
13. Realize you can't drive 12 hours in one day. Book a hotel 8 hours away to push yourself to greater limits! (your positive demeanor assures you a 4 hour day of mountain driving will be a cake walk after 8 hours of boring road)
14. Pack frantically, but only the necessities! You know, only the things you can fit into your Conestoga wagon *cough silver impala cough*
15. Buy "Bossypants" written and read by Tina Fey on audio book (It's like she's in the car with you!)
16. Disrupt your cats daily lives by moving everything around and bringing out the suitcase, a surefire sign of abandonment
17. Have your boyfriend cram your mountain of shit  trail supplies into the impala  wagon.
18. Try not to cry...cry a lot.
19.Drive across the wasteland that is North Dakota (you promised yourself you'd never do that again you lying bastard!)
20. Take 10 hours to get to the over halfway point you thought would only take 8 hours (you forgot about stopping for eating/bathroom/fuel)
21.Be blearily checked into the hotel by a friendly, mustachioed man at 11pm.
22. Make the final leg of your journey listening to "Bossypants" a second time (It's just like having my very own friend talking to me!)
23. Be greeted in your new town by a man named Dave (a Dustin Hoffman look-a-like) who is showing you an apartment (I may have set this up beforehand...or Dave is just magical and my life is just a sea of random people wanting to help me)
24. Find the house of your friend's boyfriend's friends where you've been promised a room to stay.
25. Have a cat named Moose welcome you with open paws.

If you follow this 25 step plan you, too, can move across two states!

The Sun Also Rises (or) Everyone Gets Drunk and Watches a Bull Fight

Minnie and Ajax

     First of all I'd like to start this post off by apologizing (again) for not posting for months. It wasn't that I was really busy, I was just going through my typical Winter existential crisis. I also had to move, adopted two wonderful kittens, got a new job, and turned 22. My new job is something I'll be writing about one Quintus whom I wrote about a while ago, well I had to find him a new home. He was a bit of an escape artist and he ran away one night. I was heartbroken, but relieved when he came back two weeks later. I found him a new home where he gets all the love he can handle from all the playmates he could ever want. Now that you're all caught up, let us dive together into Ernest Hemingway's "Everyone Gets Drunk and Watches a Bull Fight".
     Now were you to look this book up and get the scholarly take on it, they would tell you it's an important novel of a group of expatriates during the time of the "lost generation". The lost generation (a term

Hemingway's Pals

Hemingway himself popularized) are those who were coming of age during/after WWI. This was something Hemingway knew about as he was a part of the lost generation, and he was also an expatriate who liked to hang out with a group other expatriates (made any connections yet?). Now that we've taken a brief tour of a small portion of the background information, let's dive into the story.
     The main character is Jake Barnes who is a journalist in Paris, he has a series of friends who like to pop up occasionally and talk about everything and nothing. The book is from Jake's point of view and he really doesn't seem to give a flying fart in space what is happening around him. It's all pretty mild until Lady Brett Ashley shows up. See, Jake is in love with Brett and she's pretty stoked about him but, as there always is, something isn't right between them. It takes a while in the book to get to the point, but Jake was in an accident during the war and is ,consequently, impotent. Hemingway goes all clever about it and slips in a part about the steers from the Spanish bull fights and we all clap, give our oohs and aahs and are amazed at his wit (but really it is pretty witty). Anywho, Lady Ashley simply can't get over the fact that Jake is impotent and Jake doesn't feel like a full man and blah, blah, blah. So he must watch Lady Ashley parade by him with a different man every few months or so.
     Never fear Jake's life isn't all boring, he likes bull fights! I'm sorry, he doesn't like them he LOVES them. He takes his rag-tag group of lost generationers with to Spain to watch the bull fights and he just goes crazy over it all. Jake is basically the only one who can speak Spanish and this combined with his love of bull-fighting endears him to the people of the town. Now at this point it has been well established that Jake and his friends are most excellent at getting tight (drunk) on a regular basis. Even Lady Ashley has been trashed out of her mind yelling loudly in a hotel lobby. Jake usually keeps his shit together, probably because he has to watch out for the reader so they can continue to comprehend his thoughts. After several pages of some exciting bull fighting descriptions, Lady Ashley decides(most likely drunkenly) that she must get the young bull fighter Romero for her own. Never-mind that she'd had recent relationships (probably mostly relations, because that's all that seems to matter to her) with two of the men who are with the group. For some reason no one (not even the townspeople) are too excited about Lady Ashley getting with a 19 year old, so the two run off together. Jake's left with a friend who stabbed him in the back by getting with Lady Ashley (but let's be real who hasn't), and the fiancee that she decided to leave behind.
     Only a matter of days pass when Jake receives a telegram from Lady Ashley saying she has left the young bull fighter because she didn't want to ruin his career (too late you harlot!). Jake has to come to the rescue and let Lady Brett Ashley cry upon his shoulder. In the end she decides to go back to her fiancee, a secure choice for her since Jake is impotent and all. Brett tells Jake that she believes they could have had a wonderful life together and then Jake tells her "Yet, isn't that pretty to think so?". And that's it, that's all he says to her.
     At this point you maybe thinking to yourself what in the hell is this book about, well I already told you! It's the lost generation! Nothing has to make sense as long as we've got alcohol and aren't in America but are

Ernest, at his finest

American's! Oh, and we have got to have those bullfights in there! I didn't really touch on the antisemitism that comes up with the character of Robert Cohn (the best friend of Jake's that slept with Brett), because it's deep and meaningful and exhausting. Hemingway was just writing about what was happening around him, and it makes for a good read. I would recommend it but only if you don't mind reading about everyone having a damn drink in their hand on every damn page. You'd think after a while it would just be implied that they're all drinking like fish, but Hemingway makes double sure.

Butter, Batter, Burn (An Alliterative Adventure in Scandinavian Treats)

     Yes, it has been almost two months since I updated the blog. So (Mom and Dad) I'm sorry it took me forever. I was actually pretty busy in December, since I graduated college and all(please feel free to send money)! And then there was celebrating Christmas and New Years, and a mad search to find some sort of job. While these are all wonderful excuses, the fact remains that I have quite a bit of time on my hands lately. The funny thing about graduating is you don't have homework constantly harassing you, which is fabulous. It also leaves you to make up your own goals and that can be a good thing, or it could just turn into a string of wonderful afternoon naps. But I'm straying from the topic I want to address, and that ,dear readers, is krumkake.

The sacred text

This is what shame looks like

     For those of you who don't have Norwegian immigrants in your family history, you're probably wondering what the heck is krumkake. Well, friends, it's basically like an ice cream cone but tastier and prettier. You make in on a krumkake iron and then you quickly roll it onto wooden cone to give it shape. If you wait too long your krumkake will break and you'll be left with the pieces of a pretty cookie. It still tastes the same, but your Scandinavian shame will rise within you and tell you that you failed miserably and that your ancestors are seriously disappointed in you. If you manage to please those Norwegians of long ago, you do it at the expense of your fingertips. And since Norwegians are not a community to shy away from things that cause pain, rolling krumkake onto the cone will burn the ever-loving-daylights out of your fingertips.

Pain for perfection's sake

     Before I go into the excruciating pain that comes with this Norse treat, I need to explain that there is a LOT of butter in the batter. Oh, and you need a good strong Scandinavian cookbook to work out of, preferably one that is from your grandmother's house and spells it Kokebok instead of cookbook. After you've mixed up the batter from the mystical tome, you take a spoonful and place it on the krumkake iron, where it proceeds to flatten out, all while shooting butter out the sides of the iron. The iron starts crackling and hissing, and if you stand too close it will spit butter on you...and it will hurt. Once the hissing and spitting calms down it's time to take that beautiful, patterned, golden brown cookie off the iron.

A perfect specimen

     This is where the pain begins, and it doesn't stop until the last krumkake has been rolled. Having pulled off the flattened cake you have to use your fingers to roll it on the cone. Now I did mention there is a lot of butter in the batter, and this is when it starts to burn (Oh my gosh I mentioned the title words in the post!You can drink to that if you'd like...I don't mind). Your fingertips scream in agony as the hot butter strips away any fingerprint you may have once had. There is nothing wrong with leaving krumkake in a flat pancake shape, but if you prefer not to anger the ancestors AND the gods of Norse mythology you suck it up and burn those fingertips right off and you thank Thor for letting you do this sacred work. You have to work quickly because those little cookies harden up into a non pliable Frisbee in no time flat. After roughly 30 minutes to an hour of burning away your fingers, you'll have a beautiful army of rolled cones gazing lovingly up at you, waiting for their chance to be devoured.

An army of krumkake

      Holding the sacred krumkake in your heavily bandaged hands you look skyward and know that on this day, the ancestors are well pleased with your work. You take a big bite and the rolled cone quickly breaks and cascades down your chest onto the floor. Unable to pick the pieces off the floor due to your injured fingers, you offer it up as a sacrifice to all those who have rolled before you, and for those who will continue to roll long after you're gone.

Things My Grandma Taught Me

     At the beginning of last month my Grandma Miller died, and let me tell you, it was one of the suckiest days I think I've ever had. I knew it was coming, she had gotten progressively worse from pancreatic cancer and the night before she died I couldn't fall asleep. I laid awake in my bed sobbing uncontrollably because I knew my life was going to change drastically. There are still many days where I wake up and think "I should give Grandma a call!" Only to realize I will never get to hear her cheerful "Good afternoon." as she picks up the phone. So even though I still can hardly think of her without losing it and sobbing all over the unlucky victim who happens to be near, I wanted to write a list of things that my grandmother taught me:
 1. (And this is the most important thing on the list) Food is the best way to show people you care about them.
         My grandma was always ready with something for me to eat, whether it was homemade lefsa, an apple   pie that she just happened to have taken out of the freezer that day, or a big tall glass of Sunny D. It didn't matter what it was, it always tasted good because Grandma was the one who gave it to me. Except this one time when I thought she left out a glass of milk for me, but she was leaving it on the counter to sour for cooking purpose...that did not taste good.
 2. You have to take life one day at a time.
         Marvel was a tough lady, I think anybody who knew her would heartily agree with that. She never got to finish school because she had to stay at home and help. She helped my grandpa though losing his arm, and again when he had a stroke and lost the use of his legs. Her own health also suffered after she had a heart attack and then had to have bi-pass surgery. Oh yeah, and she made it through having colon cancer when she was like 85. Grandma always told me that we have to take things one day at a time, and I know that's how she did it. Any time I would call her and talk to her about things that were bothering me she would calmly listen and say: "What can we do but take it one day at a time?".
 3. Always stay close to friends you have made and the family you have.
         It never ceased to amaze me how my grandma would stay connected with people she hadn't seen in a long time. Not a single Christmas would pass without a phone call from Sweden, and my grandma would answer with a hearty "God Jul!" to my grandpa's cousin on the other line. When my grandma was in her thirties she became best friends with the pastor's wife. Even after the pastor moved to another congregation, my grandma still stayed in close contact with her friend. My grandma would always smile as she remembered driving past the parsonage and honking extra loud, just so her friend would know who was driving by.
  4. Singing makes everything more fun.
         When I was in kindergarten I had the great joy of spending every Wednesday at Grandma's, since I
didn't have school that day and both my parents were working. It was during these many wonderful days that I had the great joy of learning several of Grandma's favorite songs. She would be dusting the top shelf of her China cabinet singing away "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do". I would smile at Grandma, and it didn't take long until I learned the words and could sing along with her. If she wasn't in the mood to sing about a tandem bicycle she would start "How much is that doggie in the window?". When we would get into her car to run errands, we would race to see who could buckle in first as we belted "Meet me in Saint Louie, Louie! Meet me at the fair!". I have my grandmother to thank for my wonderfully eclectic music taste, and the desire to sing no matter what I'm doing.
 5. Greet everyone pleasantly.
        My grandma would always answer the phone with "Good morning" or if it was later she would use the
appropriate time of day. She was always matter of fact with it, but it was a pleasant way to start the conversation. You could always count on this familiar greeting, and it was comforting to know that she really was wishing you a good morning. Grandma also loved to sign up as a greeter for our church on Sunday mornings. She would stand at the door in a snappy looking jacket with a smile on her face and warmly shake your hand as you came into church. If she didn't know I coming home and saw me at church, her face would always light up and she would give me a big hug. I'm going to miss those hugs.
  6. You're never too old to try something new.
         Growing up in a rather strict religion, my grandma had never danced in her life. That is, until she was
88 years old. At my cousin's wedding my uncle came up to my grandma and finally got her out onto the dance floor. Everyone watched with amazement as my grandma started cutting a rug. My 2 year old nephew couldn't resist dancing with great-grandma so he cut in, and the smile on Grandma's face was enormous. Another new thing my grandma was going to do was get a tattoo with me on her 90th birthday. She was thinking about getting a Norwegian flag on her foot or ankle, and I think she would have done it had she made it to January 8th. As it is, I have to go to the tattoo parlor by myself that day.
  7. Make every hug count
        There are so many wonderful things that I had the great privilege of learning from Marvel Miller, but I  think the best thing I learned from her was how to give great hugs. Not once would I be able to see Grandma without giving her at least two hugs, one when I said hello and one when I said goodbye. These hugs really had to count because being good Scandinavians we very rarely said how we felt, and this is good because I get emotional whenever I try telling someone what they mean to me.
  8. Know when it's time to let go.
        This was a very recent thing that she taught me, and it's the hardest lesson I ever had to learn. One of
my last visits with Grandma I was sitting next to her and she told me it was important for me to be able to let go and not to dwell on her passing. Hearing this directly from her was so heart breaking that I burst into tears. I didn't want to have to say goodbye to her, but she knew that, and made me face what was happening. Grandma was always very straightforward, and you could always count on her for  tough love when it was needed, even when she was dying.

     Even though it's been almost two months since she died, not a day goes by that I don't think of her. Now, this could be because I have her Mount Rushmore souvenir daily flip calendar (you turn it toward you and the day changes), or it could be because the lessons she taught me are used every day. So even though Thanksgiving has passed, I am thankful for all the wonderful things that my grandma taught me.

Grandma at Christmas Last Year

Happy Halloween!

Boom, beheaded.

     In honor of this most wonderful holiday, I'm going to take you on a short journey over the past few years. My freshman year of college I missed out on Halloween because I was involved in choir, don't worry, I wised up and did not join choir ever again. Anyway, that year was a bust but the next year...oh the next year. I spent months planning, seriously months. An idea hit me sometime around March or April (as it tends to do) and I knew that this was a golden idea. When the last weekend in October hit I dressed up in all my garb and headed to my friend's house as Marie Antoinette. Lest you think I was just all pretty and dolled up, let me disillusion you, I had dried blood all around my neck. As you all well know she was beheaded, wait let me backtrack a titch. She was the queen of France right before the revolution, and it was bad luck she was a ruler then. Anyway, her and her husband ran the country into ground (it wasn't all their fault but they didn't fix anything so there you go) and consequently they were beheaded. My dress was a Goodwill find, and I put baby-powder in my hair to make it look like a powdered wig, to finish it off I used a make-up kit from Wal-Mart complete with dried blood. Not only was I a historical figure, I was gruesome enough for Halloween.

Got Cannibalism?

     My junior year I had an ensemble costume. This idea came a bit later in the year, sometime around September or even the beginning of October. Don't let this make you think it wasn't as fabulous just because I had less time to dwell on it, it was awesome. My boyfriend and I decided to recreate the Donnor party incident. For those of you who aren't well versed on gruesome pioneer deaths, let me fill you in. The Donnor party was making their way to the West coast, but they got stuck in the Rockies during Winter. Consequently many of them died, and those remaining reverted to cannibalism. We thought it would be a fantastic idea to make this tragic event into costume, so I was a dead member of the party with blood dripping from my face and neck and he had fake blood all over his arms and mouth. Yet again the public was educated on an historical event AND we looked gruesome...WIN!

Off with her head!

Happy Halloween!

     This year was a bit unusual for me. I just got back from a week long trip to London, and sadly I missed Halloweekend so I didn't have a costume. This morning  it was suggested that I go as the Red Queen. Being an English Literature major I decided that I could honor the work of Lewis Carroll and have a costume that people might actually recognize. Throwing together some things I had in my closet I finished it all off with my theatre make-up kit and was good to go. My boyfriend went as a lumberjack, since he has a job where he makes food and didn't want to scare away customers...or create sanitary issues. While this year was not gruesome, it was still fun to dress up. So may you all enjoy this wonderful holiday, whether you dressed up or not.

Design

The script

     Hello my faithful readers, yet again I have abandoned you for a long period of time. I do apologize, but I really have been busy and I'm going to tell you all about it! Yay! Seriously though, I have had hardly any free time. The reason I have no time for frivolities? My senior thesis project. As a theatre major it is required of me to do one big blow out project my senior year to put my knowledge to the test. I chose to do costume design for a new play called "44 Plays for 44 Presidents". Now onward to a literary journey that will cover the last five months.

The Poster for the Concordia Production

    It all began with a proposal. I had to make myself look really good and tell the theatre department all the wonderful things I would create if they let me do costume design. This was easy enough, since I am an English Literature major, after all, and it's my job to dig deeper and find meaning in everything. After this was accomplished I had to wait and see if they would accept my proposal. Well, they did and now it was just to wait and see which show I would be designing. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Then the day finally came and I saw the title "44 Plays for 44 Presidents". I had never heard of this play, and my mind immediately went into shock mode. How in the Clark Gable's mustache was I going to make 44 different costumes?
     Once I finally had the script in my hands I made myself sit down to quietly read it. Outwardly I may have been calm, but inwardly my mind was working into overdrive. "George Washington needs an Adam leaf-type outfit! Ben Franklin must look awesome! Oh my lanta what in the world is a pounder? Wait, is this guy supposed to be Elvis? Can I even find a white jumpsuit?" But most importantly "What in the name of Ben Franklin's fried kite will this coat become?" See, there is the Presidential Coat that is passed from actor to actor to signify that they are playing the president at that moment. Well, not so much passed as tugged, pulled, thrown, and general tussling.

I designed these!

     My first reading of the script was the end of April, leaving me all summer to wrestle with ideas in my head. I would occasionally sit down and work for several hours on drawings. Some were just doodles, while others had more of a permanent feel to them. After I spoke with my project supervisor he said to think about  where the coat is coming from, and to whom it really belongs. The cloudy fog lifted from my poor tired brain and I knew that it was George's coat, it always had been.
     Design is a frustrating beast, because while you may be very proud of your design and love what it brings to the table, the director may not like the way it feels. It took a few meetings and a couple re-draws, but my designs got approved and now the searching began. And oh the searching! It was terrible, I had to online shop for hours at work! Ha, just kidding it was awesome. I found some pretty nifty clothes for great prices. Although I will not be ordering from this one website ever again because I selected expedited shipping and it took them three weeks to get it to me. I almost had a heart attack because the 4 shirts I ordered didn't come until three days before I needed to start using them.

The skeleton of the coat 

     Not only did I get to online shop, but I got to spend some quality time with the ghosts in the wardrobe. The wardrobe is one of my favorite places in the theatre, but it's also scary as heck. I once blacked out a little bit because I was going through a box and I didn't hear my boss come in, then all the sudden I look up and there is a figure in from of me. My vision went dark for a few seconds and I'm pretty sure my heart stopped. You can't hear anything in the wardrobe because there are HUNDREDS of clothing articles in there to soak up the sound. These clothes are just a joy to behold and so much fun to dig through. I was lucky enough to find four pairs of pants, five shirts, a sweater, and a jacket that worked for 44 Plays. This is a huge deal since that covered basically half of my actors.
     While most of the clothing was purchased for this particular show, I did have the "joy" of making the almighty coat. Making clothing is exciting, but it is also terrible and frustrating. There was one day I wanted to take the coat out behind the dumpster and beat it with a lead pipe, but I didn't. That would have been stupid because it had no feelings and it would have made it messy and ruined all the work I already did on it. This past week I finished the damn coat, and after sewing things on wrong, making adjustments, creating 39 coat buttons, and stabbing myself with a needle more times than I can count, I had something that I was proud to call my own. Even though I'm proud of it, every time I look at it I still want to throw something at it to let it know that I am its master.

The finished coat will be showcased in the next blog post!

     The next step is going to be damage control, because something always goes wrong. People get careless, and sacrifice the safety of clothes for dramatic effect, it just happens. I'll be watching in the sidelines as my designs come to life, and are inevitably made messy and broken. And I'll be waiting with safety pins, because that is my job, protecting my creations.

Diablo Part 2: Dawn of Diablo

She WILL find you

     I don't know how, and I don't know why, but they ALWAYS find me. You make think that I'm talking about those perfume ladies in department stores who spray perfume in your open mouth. Or perhaps the homeless person standing at the intersection you found yourself stuck at for the last ten minutes. No, I'm talking about woodchucks. You may think that this cute little fuzzy creature couldn't possibly have malicious intentions, well to put it lightly YOU'RE WRONG! Woodchucks are evil, and I think I covered this in my epic tale. They are mean, they are smelly, and frankly, they need to learn a few things about manners. For example, it is not okay to live in someone's machine shed and dig big messy holes everywhere. It's messy, it ruins things, and it creates unnecessary tidy-up work for the owner of said machine shed...and quite possibly his daughter as well (who may or may not be myself). So without further ado, I present "Diablo Part 2: Dawn of Diablo".
     It was a standard Wednesday (as it always seems to be), when my mother noticed something outside our kitchen window. Being the beginning of August, it was hotter than a fat man's armpit outside and yet, our dog Alfie was jumping and running around my car. Desperately trying to cram his very large dog body under my low riding vehicle, it was obvious that something was under my car. My mother wondered if perhaps it was a woodchuck. I felt a cloud come over the previously bright kitchen and my brows furrowed in angst over the memory of another fateful summer day that forever shall live in infamy. I knew it was a woodchuck, nothing else would have the audacity to hide under my car in the middle of the afternoon.

This, this is what I hate.

     Since my mother had to leave, it was decided that my father and I would watch for the "mystery" animal to emerge from under my car. Startled by the noise from the garage opening, a small blur of brown fur raced from under my car to the middle of the lawn. There, panting in exhaustion, was a woodchuck. Knowing that Alfie didn't have the same woodchuck slaying skills as Erma, my dad and I watched as he nipped at the woodchuck. As previously stated it was very hot outside, so after some mild chasing, Alfie and the woodchuck just stood and watched each other. Alfie panted as the slobber clung to his lose doggie cheeks. The woodchuck was too tired to bare his disgusting buck teeth and just stood on his haunches watching.
     Inside the kitchen my father decided he'd had enough of the show and walked into the other room. Anxiously watching the tired animals, I grew concerned as the slow battle crept toward the front doorway. Having no desire to open the door and invite the woodchuck in for some cold lemonade, I told my dad that I would sneak down to the barn and grab a pitchfork. My previous battle with Diablo had taught me that you needed something to pierce the skin to really kill it, or else you'd just end up with a wet, angry woodchuck. Creeping around the side of the house, I tiptoed toward the barn. Not wanting to distract Alfie from his important job of keeping the woodchuck occupied. Of course, the moment that big hulking dog caught sight of me, he ran toward me. Worried that the woodchuck might escape, I shooed Alfie back toward the house. Not sure of what I wanted he just ended up bounding toward me and jumping at me. Shaking my head I went into the barn and grabbed the pitchfork, hoping that the evil spawn of Diablo would be patiently awaiting his certain doom.

Super dog saves the world, one woodchuck at a time

     When I had finally worked my way back up to the house the woodchuck cowered in the corner of the house. I lifted up the pitchfork to bring forth his doom, and suddenly found I couldn't do it. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but I think it may have been that memory of a summer day when a woodchuck sat cowering in a tree. Most likely it was because I was scared I would miss and he would run at my legs and bite me and then I'd get rabies. At any rate, my father came out of the house, motioned to me to give him the pitchfork, and promptly stabbed Diablo 2. The woodchuck let out a squeal as my father gave him a few more flesh wounds. Alfie grabbed the dying woodchuck and pulled him back out into the yard, playing with him until he died. My father and I went back into the house and watched Alfie for a few more minutes. We both started laughing when Alfie picked up his woodchuck and pranced into the barn as a heavy rain began to fall. Even though he was holding a woodchuck in his mouth, I could still see a self-satisfied grin on Alfie's face. The world was finally safe from another evil woodchuck.